As a piano teacher of 35 years, I have had difficulty teaching my students to sight read well. Sight reading is playing a new piece on the piano from music notation for the first time. Some students seem to be able to do this fairly well and others do not. The ability seems independent of how many piano lessons they have had. I recently created a concrete way for them to be able to do this and it seems to be successful for all my students. Traditional piano note reading relies on learning notes by letter names and then relating them to the piano. Even though this is the standard and accepted practice and has been for many years, I have discovered that relying on the letter names seems to be detrimental to acquiring good sight reading skills. I have tried many sight reading methods for my students and have not found one that is universally helpful or simple to use. My method is both.